Apologize for the short diary here, but Rachel Maddow is reporting that according to the Associated Press, President Obama is rejecting all the options for Afghanistan presented by his advisors.
...the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama's thinking.
The president is considering options that include adding 30,000 or more U.S. forces to take on the Taliban in key areas of Afghanistan, and to buy time for the Afghan government's small and ill-equipped fighting forces to take over. The other three options on the table are ranges of troop increases, from a relatively small addition of forces to the roughly 40,000 that the top U.S. general in Afghanistan prefers, according to military and other officials.
The key sticking points appear to be timelines and mounting questions about the credibility of the Afghan government.
The biggest part of the news is that "Obama wants to make it clear that the US commitment in Afghanistan is not open-ended." Throughout the campaign, he said that in regards to the military involvements we were involved in, we needed to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. While that mainly applied to Iraq, it is equally applicable to Afghanistan, especially with the dangers posed to the women of that country by the Taliban which is still a force in the country.
I'll try and update as I find other sources and if there's a video of Rachel's interview with Anne Gearan of the AP.
UPDATE: Something I wasn't aware of, but h/t to Kossack Nulwee for alerting me to this; some additional information that may have influenced Obama's decision to hold off --
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, said senior U.S. officials.
Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry's memos were sent in the days leading up to a critical meeting Wednesday between President Obama and his national security team to consider several options prepared by military planners for how to proceed in Afghanistan. The proposals, which mark the last stage of a months-long strategy review, call for between 10,000 and 40,000 more troops and a far broader American involvement of the war.
Full article at WaPo
UPDATE 2: I tried to post the YouTube of Rachel's report on this topic, but I keep getting HTML errors; video can be found here.